


This Was a Meeting

by brave_atheart



Series: All These Difficult Things [3]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Fate, Pregnancy, Written pre-Secret Commonwealth, choice and chance and change, discussions of mythology, families, legacy, which I loved but didn’t want to incorporate here to complicate things unnecessarily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22081270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brave_atheart/pseuds/brave_atheart
Summary: “I know,” she cut him off quickly, bringing his hand to her mouth to press a kiss to the back of it. “I know all this en't perfect.”Lyra and Will, caught up in their hidden destiny.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry
Series: All These Difficult Things [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/348404
Comments: 14
Kudos: 96





	1. the soul rose to such heights

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles and work title are from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
> 
> This story is set in my series exploring Will and Lyra’s lives as they travel back-and-forth between a new doorway.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lyra itched to consult her aletheiometer again, but she knew it would give her the same cryptic and messily complicated answers it always did when she asked it anything about Will.”

Lyra Silvertongue was pacing up and down in front of her open window, the picture of simmering anxiety. She paused every time she passed it to peer down at the street below, then, dissatisfied with what she saw, continued her relentless movement. Eventually her dæmon Pantalaimon leapt up onto the windowsill from where he had crawled up the drainpipe. His furry face was alight with frustration as he shook his head. 

“Still nothing,” he reported, though Lyra had known as much from the moment he’d been close enough to feel his disappointment. 

“Oh, I knew this was a bad idea, Pan!” she cried, her fingers twisting through her long blonde hair. “Just because we had that blasted dinner tonight—“

“He’s traveled directly here before, there’s no need for us both to always be traipsing to the door and back,” her dæmon argued, scampering into the room, his paws leaving wet footprints along her soft rug. 

Lyra itched to consult her aletheiometer again, but she knew it would give her the same cryptic and messily complicated answers it always did when she asked it anything about Will, or their visits, or their future, answers which no amount of pouring through academic texts could help her unravel. Lyra groaned and rubbed at her eyes, before collapsing with a whirl of her long skirts into a nearby armchair. She tucked her feet under her and crossed her arms tightly. 

“It’s much too late, something is wrong,” she muttered sourly, her thoughts flickering through imagined scenarios of what terrible struggle Will could be caught up in. “Pan, what if the door—?” she bit her lip, trying to keep the worst idea at bay, unable to finish the thought. 

“We should run a hot bath,” Pantalaimon suggested soothingly. “It’ll help us relax, and then the time will pass so much faster,” he added. 

“The last thing I want is to be stuck in the tub, if something really is wrong.”

“Then let’s just try to think of something else, until they’re here,” Pantalaimon pleaded. 

Lyra sighed heavily. “I can’t, Pan, I just can’t,” she said. Her mind was consumed with thoughts of Will even on the best of days, even when she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again for weeks. She couldn’t turn her thoughts from him now if her life depended on it. 

Pan darted back up to the windowsill and whined, scratching agitatedly against the frame, and Lyra almost missed the sound of her apartment door turning open. At once, she flew out of her chair and across the room, running straight into Will’s arms and slamming him back against the doorframe in her wild haste. 

“Where have you been?” she cried over him anxiously as he spluttered a greeting. “We’ve been waiting for hours, we thought—“

He shook his head in reassurance, as Pan and Kirjava squeaked and keened and pounced on each other in joy. “I’m sorry, we’re fine, I had a little car trouble on my end, but it was nothing, and it was a rough day for Mum—“ he sighed wearily, clasping Lyra tight. “So I was with her much longer than I’d planned, and when I made it through and got here I just had to go around back since it’s so late and your porter was gone, and I broke a latch,” he explained sheepishly, pulling back to show her his bleeding palm. “It scraped me a bit when I was pulling at the hinge,” he said, checking his battered watch and wincing when he saw the time. “It really is much later than I thought, I’m sorry to worry you,” he apologized, cupping her face briefly in his uninjured hand. 

Lyra kissed him swiftly. “I’ll believe that you’re okay when I see you’re not bleeding anymore,” she retorted, thinking of his wound from the subtle knife that had bled, and bled, and bled. Quickly, she sat him down on her small sofa and began searching for her meager store of bandages and ointments, stocked on Will’s scandalized instructions when he first discovered the extent to which she habitually relied on herbs and teas to cure any ailments. She found a clean cloth and ran the tap, bringing her supplies back into the sitting area. 

“Just call me Doctor Parry,” she teased, while he cracked a smile. She managed to clean his palm but ended up squeezing too much of the so-called antiseptic ointment out of its tiny tube. 

“Damn,” she swore, while he smirked at her. “I should just get you a poultice or something - when we’re on expeditions Thomas is always after me about my ‘lack of refinement’, but I still prefer chewed-up bloodmoss,” she joked. 

Pan laughed, but Will, to his utmost embarrassment, heard the name of another man on her lips and felt a momentary burst of jealousy so feral it left him feeling scorched.

Lyra’s deft fingers which so confidently manipulated her golden compass were much less able when it came to first aid. She was making a mess of knotting his bandage and scowling with irritation. Will covered her hand with his own and stilled her movements, tucking the edges in neatly. Then he finally took her face in his hands and gave her a searing kiss, pulling her to standing and sending the ointment clattering to the floor. 

Lyra engulfed every one of his senses - the taste of her mouth, the sweet perfume of her hair, the bliss of her body against his. He loved her so deeply and longed for her so much that it was almost painful. He knew he could kiss her until he died, and it still wouldn’t be enough - being with her felt as close to holy as anything he had ever known. If he were ever to get on his knees for anything, it would have been for her, only her. He kissed her hungrily, and she bit his lip as she threaded her fingers through his hair, scratching at his neck. He panted and hauled her up into his arms, burying his face in the crook of her neck. She gripped him fiercely as he carried her through to her bedroom. 

...

Later, when they lay blissfully in each others’ embrace, their dæmons similarly entangled across the apartment, Lyra saw a look of contemplation come over Will’s dark, handsome face. 

“What‘re you thinking of?” she murmured softly. 

He glanced down at her, as if wondering how to begin. “Mary said something to me, before I left,” he shared. “About the door. About how we can go back and forth, when we thought we’d never be able to.” 

Lyra rolled over sleepily. “Oh?” she mumbled, finding it hard to care about the whys of their unique scenario when Will was here, wrapped around her in her bed. 

He nodded, rustling the pillow. “Through grace, she thinks,” he explained idly. “She says it’s a concept in the Christian church about the love and mercy given by God when he thinks people should have it, not necessarily because anyone did anything to earn it.” 

Lyra frowned automatically, her hackles raised at the mention of the Church. “What, like the angels just threw us a bone? It en’t for any reason except they were feeling generous?” she snorted childishly, feeling put out by the idea that her happiness was due to the whim of an imagined immortal. 

“Well, Mary meant more like, the universe sort of...owed us, I think,” Will responded evenly. “Like we were given this, deliberately.” 

Lyra squirmed. “But for what reason?” she argued, suspicious. “I’ve said before, the aletheiometer doesn’t like to talk about it, so I really think it must be an oversight, or, I dunno, an accident. There en’t any special reason they would want to let us move through worlds, or to be with each other.“

Will shrugged, and sat up abruptly, crawling out of the sheets to reach for his bag on the floor near the foot of her bed. He pulled on those odd undergarments that he said were called ‘boxers’ and began rifling through its contents, but whatever he was searching for he soon gave up in a huff. Lyra followed him, wrapping herself in a spare blanket and kneeling down beside him on the carpeted floor.

Will opened his mouth, as if to say something. Then he closed it again. He looked lost for a moment, then quite angry. Lyra remembered trying to guess what it his dæmon would be, and thinking that it would express a nature that was savage, and courteous, and unhappy. 

She took his hand - she liked having his hand to hold. It was warm, and rough with calluses at his fingertips, but soft from how much he was always cleaning them as a doctor.

He rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t like to think of it as an accident,” he admitted. “Lyra, if it’s a mistake - that means it could get taken away,” he said gravelly, his voice unsteady. 

She squeezed his hand in hers. “We’ve done so much, we’ve given so much,” she whispered. “Let’s just be good, and grateful, but for ourselves, Will, not for anyone else.”

He shook his head frustratedly. “I wish—“

“I know,” she cut him off quickly, bringing his hand to her mouth to press a kiss to the back of it. “I know all this en't perfect, we’ll probably never - we got to go back and forth, always, but we can visit. We’ve both of us got things to do, and we’ll do ‘em, always. So there’s not much point in being sorry about it, is there?" she shrugged and pulled him close, tugging his folded hands to her chest and tucking her head in the crook of his shoulder. 

He kissed the top of her head, light as a moth’s wings. “No,” he said softly into her hair. “I suppose not.”

When they went back to bed they slept well, and deeply, each with strange and vividly colourful dreams.


	2. that grief and this joy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lyra, slipping in and out of his life like smoke, yet so concrete in his mind, his heart. Irrevocably entwined with his soul. It was irritatingly confusing to sort out.”

Will Party often imagined what it must be like for ordinary people to be together. Today, for example - he thought that, for all intents and purposes, he could reasonably be picking his girlfriend up at the airport. He had friends who certainly were under the impression that Lyra simply lived on another part of the continent, and neither of them could move yet because of her work, or his mother. Most of which was actually true, which was why Will tried very hard to pretend like it was as he drove through the busy Oxford streets to meet her. 

He hadn't seen Lyra in half a year - she had gone as part of a diplomatic assembly to Svalbard, and he had recently travelled to Scotland for a medical conference. And since they really had no way of communicating besides crawling through the other's world and tracking them down in person, they had set a date six months ago for today, in Will's world, since Lyra had claimed she'd want a change of scenery after the Bears. 

"And you made fun of Lyra for wanting to travel again right after her expedition," Kirjava teased from the passenger seat. "You know you love having her here."

Will smiled faintly as he conceded his dæmon’s point. "I love being anywhere she is," he corrected, stopping at a light. "But when she's here, it's like... Well, I can take her to my mother, can't I?" he said, running his hands along the rim of the steering wheel. "And we can go on proper dates, and she even met Sara and Jim..." he trailed off as the light changed and he made a turn through the busy streets. 

Kirjava nodded - as much as a cat can really nod. "You like when other people here know her. It reminds you she's real even when she's away."

"I suppose so, yeah," Will admitted. Even his daemon’s phrasing - ‘away’, as if his lover sometimes took business trips or exotic vacations, not as though she continually traveled through a gap in his universe to return periodically to her own world. Lyra, slipping in and out of his life like smoke, yet so concrete in his mind, his heart. Irrevocably entwined with his soul. It was irritatingly confusing to sort out. 

But they made do. They both worked, tirelessly, to make their worlds better - he through his pediatric medical practice and she through her charitable foundations. They had renewed their vows to build a Republic of Heaven, to do good, to make stories for themselves. All of which meant that they couldn’t bemoan their time apart, but rather live two separate lives with vigor and joy, two lives which, through their own sheer force of will, entwined. 

Today, Will steered his car smoothly into a tiny car park near a garden which was their most frequent meeting spot in his Oxford, then nearly severed more of his fingers in his haste to slam his door shut and get to where he knew Lyra would be emerging soon. He and Kirjava both winced in pain as they hurried to their agreed location, and then his vision tunneled, seeing the great love of his life walking briskly along the path ahead of him, as radiant and stridently beautiful as always. Lyra was beaming, her steps becoming faster as she, too, caught sight of them. She was wearing a long, oversized woolen coat and a fancy hat, and for a moment, Will's step hitched, because he thought he was looking at Mrs. Coulter. 

"You startled me!" he called to her, recovering. He hurried his pace to reach her. "You looked just like your mother."

Something in Lyra's face changed when he said it, but he missed its importance as he raced forward, reaching out to kiss her. 

"Will—“ she tried to warn him as he drew her close, but it wasn't enough to stop the shock from coursing through his body as he embraced her, and felt a distinctive curve of her stomach underneath her loose coat. 

His heart leapt into his throat. He drew his head back sharply, meeting her gaze, and seeking reassurance, some sort of explanation that would calm the fear suddenly pounding through his veins. But her eyes were wide in her face, lashes unblinking as she confirmed what he already knew without saying a word. It had been six months since he had seen her. And Lyra was pregnant. 

"What?" he rasped, his throat suddenly dry. His hands began to tremble as he looked into Lyra's steady face. She gave the smallest of nods, and it was a blessing and a curse, so Will gripped her shoulder tightly, struggling to form a sentence. 

"You- we, we've...” he gasped around the lump in his throat, struggling to form a sentence. “I mean, we'll be—?” 

This miracle before him, proof of a child that would be his and Lyra's, was something so breathtaking that Will felt hot tears spring to his eyes. But he couldn't manage to speak around the images crawling through his head of this new future, this gift that was clouded by their separation. He ached already from being kept away, he ached thinking of his life apart from her, and he wanted to scream and howl at every Specter, every God, at any angel or speck of Dust he could - he felt angry like he hadn't since he was a boy in the early years after he shattered the Knife. 

"Lyra—“ he choked out, but she beat him to it. 

"Will," she said, giving a sad sort of half-smile, “take a moment, yeah?”

He could do nothing but squeeze her hand in acknowledgement of all he wanted to say to her in this moment, and he strode off quickly, away to the shelter of the small walled garden between the park and the street, away to the safety of the brick and mortar. 

"Stay with her," he instructed Kirjava through a clenched jaw, as his feet carried him away. If he couldn't comfort Lyra, then Kirjava would, until he was ready.

His dæmon curled her tail around herself, and stayed perched at Lyra's feet. 

Lyra gathered Pantalaimon in her arms and sat gently on a nearby bench. It was cold for early fall, with a wind that chilled her skin and fluttered through her hair. But the sun was shining golden through the trees, and it warmed her face as she leaned against the wood of the bench. She sighed wearily. It had been a long journey, and the thought of this reunion had made her buzz with a mix of excitement and dread for days. 

“I’m sorry we couldn’t think of a way to contact you,” she told Kirjava. “I couldn’t abandon the expedition, you know, and by the time I realized...” she trailed off, swallowing over the painful memories of discovering her pregnancy en route to Svalbard, alone and frightened and frantic to be with Will. She smoothed a hand along the now-considerable swell of her stomach, remembering the mingled terror and joy of feeling life first growing inside her - how she had thought, bittersweetly, of her own mother, and how desperate she had been to share it all with Will. “Anyway, we thought seriously of sending Pantalaimon here without me, when we found out, months ago, but in the end I couldn’t bear it, I needed him with me. It’s been hard, Kir,” she confessed, relieved to say it after so many long months of restraint. 

"It's not that we’re angry with you, of course," Kirjava said, sitting primly on the ground. "He's angry with himself. Because he’s afraid he won't be able to be there all the time," she moved closer tentatively, and butted her head against Lyra's knee. "It's awful enough when it's you and Pan," she explained, rubbing her ears against Lyra's leg, intimate and comforting. "You mean everything to us, already. And now, to be apart from your baby...well. He knows what it was like. With his father gone, too."

Lyra watched Will rage in that little garden a hundred metres or so away, watched him pace and then pound his fist harshly against the wall with a sharp growl of frustration, his whole body radiating tension. She didn't want this for him. 

She sighed, and leaned down to scratch Kirjava behind the ears. "But, how can he think any of it is his fault? That's just stupid, inn't, Pan?"

Her dæmon scampered from her arms down onto the bench beside her, as Will finally spun around to rest with his back against the bricks, his chest heaving. 

"Well," Pantalaimon said deliberately, "it's who he is. We wouldn't love him if he wasn't Will. And Will always takes too much responsibility, doesn't he?"

Lyra snorted and ran a hand over her rounded belly, feeling the baby kick - maybe in agreement. "I suppose," she sighed, wondering for the thousandth time how they'll manage this. “I just - I want more for him," she told the dæmons quietly. "I want him to be happy, always."

"Well, that's sort of a silly wish," Pan chuffed, slinking away from her off the bench and scurrying across the park to Will. 

The cat glared at his retreating form reproachfully, and Lyra was glad to have Will's dæmon on her side. "It's not silly," she sniffed, reassuring Lyra. "It's just exactly what Will wants for you, too."

Pantalaimon had slunk tentatively towards where Will was leaning with his eyes closed against the wall of the garden. The dæmon paused near his ankles. Will clearly sensed his presence but didn’t open his eyes. His hands were braced against the rough wall behind him, as if he needed its support to stay upright. Pan saw the tight control of every one of his muscles, how he was holding himself rigidly in place. 

Will had heard the skittering of Pan’s claws along the cobbled garden path, but hadn’t been able to move from his state of total stillness. He could hardly breathe.

When Lyra’s dæmon remained still and silent, Will made a tremendous effort to find his voice. He took a shallow breath. “I think I’m going mad, Pan,” he whispered. 

It was his deepest fear. He was his mother’s son, and after spending his youth seeing her gripped by paranoia and confusion he was petrified of following in those footsteps. He was terrified of outliving his strength of mind. 

Pantalaimon bristled at this confession and tottered up on his hind legs. “Why would you think that?” he asked. “You know how this happened. You know it makes sense, really. And you’re the most clear-headed person we know,” he added. 

Will finally opened his eyes. “I just can’t believe that any of this...” he shook his head as if emerging from too-long underwater. “This is all - it’s so much more than I ever expected I would...” he trailed off, uncertain. 

Pantalaimon inched closer and nuzzled at Will’s ankle, sending a heady shock coursing through his body. “In many ways, we’re all very lucky. Wouldn’t you say?” the little dæmon asked in a steady voice, looking up at him. 

Will felt with great clarity the strong flow of love from Lyra’s dæmon to him, and at the same time could sense Kirjava mewling as Lyra stroked her ears. He felt suddenly, effortlessly, determined. 

Lyra, meanwhile, was startled from her exchange with Kirjava by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. Will was striding back towards her, and his serious face held a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. 

She stood and was enfolded instantly into his embrace in a great rush, his hands still shaking slightly where they wrapped around her. He shook his head rapidly, the stubble on his jaw scraping against her cheekbone. “I can’t believe this,” he whispered in a hushed voice that was almost reverential. “Are you happy?” he asked roughly, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Lyra, tell me everything.”

At their feet, Kirjava gave Pantalaimon a meaningful look, as if to say ‘I told you so’.


	3. something higher showed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He remembered, abruptly, Lyra as she was in Cittàgazze, with her torn and rumpled clothes, her sturdy shoes. He saw a tiny version of her stomping around in his mind.”

They walked back to his parked car together, hand in hand. The sun was just beginning to set and Will felt the chilly air nip at the ends of his missing fingers, even though they were enclosed in Lyra’s steady palm. Pantalaimon was once again draped around her neck like a fashionable fur collar, and Will found himself longing for a scarf. 

“Are you warm enough?” he asked Lyra, anxious. “Do you need anything?”

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and she shook her head, squeezing his hand a little tighter. 

“I’m fine, Will, honestly,” she said calmly, glancing up at him through the dusk light that was turning her golden hair tawny. “I’ve just come from the North, remember - anywhere is warmer in comparison. Are we going to your flat?” she asked as they approached his parked car and he began to dig out his keys. Will lived in a modest two-bedroom in an older building near his clinic, close to shops and parks and a local pub where he had expected to take Lyra for an early supper that evening. 

“I haven’t got anything in,” he admitted. “Are you hungry?”

She grinned. “I’m always hungry, lately,” she confessed, and she laughed, shaking her head back enough that Will thought her neat little hat might slip, but there must have been some hidden, delicate pins holding it in place, because it stayed perfectly balanced. He remembered, abruptly, Lyra as she was in Cittàgazze, with her torn and rumpled clothes, her sturdy shoes. He saw a tiny version of her stomping around in his mind, remembering the delighted way she had devoured hotdogs and Cokes at that movie cinema here in his Oxford. He thought of how, the first time she had tried to cook him breakfast in his flat after their reunion, she had burned a dozen eggs and sulked all morning, petulant and child-like. 

He was clenching his keys so hard the metal was beginning to bite into his palm. Lyra noticed his distress, and drew closer as they approached his car. She let him lead her to the passenger side, for she never cared to learn what was what when it came to transportation in his world, declaring it all needlessly complex, unlike her preferred gyptian boats or aeronautical balloons. But she stopped him from opening her door by taking both his hands in hers and facing him directly. 

“Will,” she murmured, and it was enough to send his heart racing, “look at me,” she said softly, searching his face. She pulled his hands to rest at her waist, stepping close, as close as she could, now, with - his mind stuttered over the thought - with the baby between them. Pan flowed down her shoulders and nuzzled tentatively at Kirjava, perched on the cold pavement. Lyra had a look of clear determination in her eyes and she cradled his face in her hands. “I’m here, we’re together, right? We’re alright,” she said soothingly. “Let’s just - can’t we just be alright? For a moment?”

“I'm sorry," he whispered, pleadingly. His mind was swimming with visions of his own childhood - his envy of other children's families, the resentment he harbored towards his absent parent. The loneliness he felt, and the blame he placed on that unknown man, his mysterious specter of a father. He never wanted that, for them. He needed Lyra to understand. He needed to beg for her - for their child's - forgiveness. "Lyra, please believe me, I am so—“

"That first night we found each other again, back in your clinic," she interrupted softly, dropping her hands to his lapel, “you said you were sorry. That's the very first thing I heard you say. And you can't be anymore." She frowned, frustrated. "I love you, and I'm happy for any time I can have with you," she explained. "And," she said fiercely, planting her feet and staring him down, "I am happy to be having your child. So don’t insult us with any regret, Will, don't you dare. You and I, we en’t got time to waste on anything like that, and you know it." 

With that, she tucked her coat closer about her, about to open the car door when a funny smile bloomed on her face. 

He stepped closer anxiously. "What is it?" he asked, scanning their surroundings. 

She shook her head and laughed brightly. "Your son seems to agree with me," she explained, and guided his hand to rest against the swell of her stomach. After a few moments passed, he felt a strong tap against his palm, and Lyra laughed again at the no-doubt awestruck expression on his face. 

"Oh, I wish I had a photogram now," she teased, as Will placed both his hands at the crest of her belly, waiting for another kick. "You—"

But Lyra's words were cut off when Will crushed his lips to hers, their teeth knocking together in his haste. He wrapped an arm around her and drew her close, their child protected between them.


	4. holes in this ordinary life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll be a magnificent father,” she said fiercely, threading their fingers together. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

When they at last managed to make it to dinner, there was a small commotion at the pub when Lyra tried to order a drink. 

“Listen to me, I’m telling you it’s not healthy, we know in this world—“ 

She huffed and struggled out of her coat testily. “I didn’t know!“ she spluttered defensively. “How was I to know? You think I’d ever want to—?”

“No, I’m just trying to explain, we’ve done so many studies - we didn’t used to know, either - but there’s loads of terrible effects—“ he tried to clarify because he felt she was really pouting about feeling that she knew less than he did. 

“I would never, never—“ she growled in an undertone, shaking her head in disgust.

She eventually compromised by ordering an herbal tea and fish’n’chips (which she treated like a true delicacy, much to Will’s amusement) but still looked chagrined when their food came. 

Will tried to coax a pleasant topic out of her. “How was your assembly with Iorek?” he inquired, digging in to his shepard’s pie. 

She shrugged and sprinkled vinegar liberally onto her plate. “We were mostly successful, I thought. We’re trying to encourage more trade, of their metal-work, you know, since his kingdom’s population is growing and the trade unions in Brytain and New Denmark and across Scandinavia are stale-mated in their negotiations,” she explained. “But I know the Bears are reluctant to engage formally with humans,” she gulped some tea and reached across for a bite of his pie, which he offered gladly. She swallowed appreciatively and continued, “Iorek tells me he doesn’t care much for humans that aren’t Silvertongues,” she said cheekily, a merry smile stealing impishly across her face. 

Will frowned, considering the implications of such a statement. “How many more people came along in this delegation?” he asked, thinking of his pregnant lover alone on an ice floe of armoured Bears. 

“This time we were a group of five. Not much accommodation available, you know - especially since I don’t much like to stay in my fathers’ old cabin.”

He pressed on. “But did you have everything you needed? Proper food and vitamins and - you know, medical attention?”

She looked at him quizzically. “Of course I had enough food, just like always,” she said, and Will felt that she had missed his point just a little, but she pressed on. “As for a doctor, I was only feeling ill on our voyage there - which was really no different than sea-sickness might’ve been,” she added. “Once we were there, I was,” she flushed slightly, “well, far enough along, I suppose, that I really began feeling much better. Stronger, and happier,” she explained. She pushed her plate away, satisfied, and then began eyeing his leftovers until he pushed them her way. “I felt him kick for the first time when I was visiting some of Iorek’s cubs,” she shared suddenly, smiling fondly. “It felt like tiny wings fluttering. It was weeks before anyone else could really feel anything, especially under all my furs. Even Pan couldn’t feel anything until a few weeks ago.”

Will felt a flare of envy for any friends and colleagues of Lyra’s that had been there when he hadn’t. He was determined not to miss anything, now. 

A sudden thought occurred to him. “Where do dæmons come from?” he asked, shocked that he had never considered it before. Kirjava, of course, had been born on the shore of the land of the Dead. Mary’s dæmon Zephyrus was only just becoming fully corporeal to him, and it wasn’t as if he had never known any babies from Lyra’s world. “I mean, are they born - surely the mother doesn’t also—“

Lyra nearly choked on her sip of tea. “Don’t be disgusting!” she admonished, wiping her mouth. “Dæmons appear when the baby has its first fully conscious thought. The sooner the dæmon appears, the smarter the baby will grow up to be, some think. Pan appeared when I was quite young, only a few days old,” she announced, bragging just a little. 

Will marveled at this new detail. “And who names them?” he wondered. “The parents? Did Asriel or Mrs. Coulter name Pan?”

She shook her head slowly. “No,” she said. “No, it’s the parents’ dæmons. So, I suppose Stelmaria must’ve named you,” she said to Pan, who was nestled under their table. 

“She must’ve,” Pantalaimon agreed. “At least, I can’t imagine it could have been—“

“No,” Lyra agreed quickly, shuddering. “Never my mother’s dæmon.”

Kirjava chimed in then. “Pantalaimon and I will decide together, when we first meet the baby’s dæmon,” she murmured. 

Will marveled again at how his own dæmon had been named by a witch. He drained his glass when another realization occurred to him. 

“Have you been thinking of any? Names, I mean?” he asked Lyra. He was suddenly bursting with curiosity.

She glanced down at her own stomach and dragged a hand over her belly again, the light catching on the delicate rings she wore. “I don’t know yet,” she confessed, with her gaze fixed on the place where their child grew beneath her skin. “I suppose we have to wait to meet them, too.”

“I don’t know how my parents chose my name,” he admitted. “I suppose there are lots of ‘Will’s, though.”

Lyra met his gaze. “No,” she said. “Only one like you, Will Parry,” she promised. “Unless we have a son and name him after you,” she added mischievously. 

He felt a disbelieving smile spread across his face. “A son,” he said, in wonderment. 

Then she softened. “He’d take up his fathers’ mantle,” she said warmly, referencing the memories he’d shared with her of his own father. 

He pictured a tiny son in Lyra’s arms. He slid across their booth to draw closer to her and draped an arm around her slender shoulders - protective, possessive. Proud. He placed a hand carefully on her belly. 

“You’ll be a magnificent father,” she said fiercely, threading their fingers together. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

And then Will had yet a third realization. “What have you been saying, when people have asked you about who the father is?” he said, his voice low and intense even to his own ears. He wanted to know if he had an imaginary counterpart - a fictitious, faceless enemy. He had an absurd image in his mind of a tall man in a suit and cloak, bizarre and blurry, as if in a dream.

Lyra grinned, easy and brilliant. “I haven’t,” she said rather smugly. “It’s quite the little scandal, actually.”

“Oh?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yeah, well, the blokes on the summit with me couldn’t’ve cared less, they knew I was happy and left it at that.”

“I see,” Will said, appreciative that Lyra hadn’t had to contend with that particular idiocy from her colleagues as she’d been facing this alone. “But when you got home?”

Lyra’s eyes practically gleamed. “Well, I only just got back from Svalbard, and no one knew or even suspected anything before I left, so,” she said with barely contained glee, “there I was, fresh off the train looking like I swallowed a bloody great balloon—“

“—and when people got right to asking questions,” Pantalaimon added, “we pretty much made up a few lies—“

“—and then told everyone to stuff it when they asked any further,” Lyra finished. 

Will had to smile, picturing the confused and scandalized upper echelon of Lyra’s Oxford society reacting to her particular brand of cheerful obstinacy. “What kind of lies?” he asked, almost afraid to know. 

“Well, we told the first few people that the father was a panserbjørne, just to see their faces,” Pan sniggered. 

Will choked a little at the nightmarish vision brought to mind, and Lyra laughed along with her dæmon. “It was brilliant,” she sighed, one hand patting the swell of her stomach, as if in praise of the child there for being part of such an outlandish lie even before its’ birth. Then she seemed to calm as she considered Will, sitting tucked close beside her under the dim bar lights which were casting an amber sheen over everything. 

“I told a few lies, at first,” she continued. Her face seemed to glow in the low light. “But then I decided that the truth really might be best,” she said significantly. “So,” her hands moved to hold his where they were lying on the tabletop, “I told everyone that the father is a wild Northern man who heals people, who has a beautiful witch-dæmon, and who traveled vast, terrible distances to find me.” His lover’s eyes shone with a somber pride, and Will felt a tremendous rush of love. “I told them that my baby’s father is a brave and powerful shaman,” Lyra whispered, her soft voice rough with emotion. 

He pressed his lips together tightly and squeezed her hands in his, unable to speak. She leaned close and kissed him, gently, her lips warm and tender, and it was as if the words he was incapable of saying were delivered in that tender kiss. Lyra sighed, full of melancholic understanding. She pressed her forehead to his, and Will felt something pass between them - a reflection on their past, on their shared hopes and shared regrets. He felt overwhelmingly grateful for her. 

Theirs was a life of compromise. Their families had both been touched by destiny and their childhoods were each full of private loneliness. Their love was something that now sustained them both in their lives apart, but they knew acutely the weight of that loneliness. Will knew they both wished for more, always, but at that moment he let himself be content with the feel of Lyra’s face against his own, and her hands in his, and their future before them. 

She nestled close. “Let’s go home,” she murmured, her breath ghosting across his ear, touching his foot with hers and lingering along his calf. Will nodded and craned his neck hastily to find their server.


	5. tormenting in its coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Had there ever been a blessing in her life better than Will Parry?”

As the dim light of the streetlamps seeped under Will’s bedroom blinds, Lyra sighed sleepily and burrowedcloser against him.

“You said 'son'", he murmured, the timbre of his voice rumbling in the ear she had pressed to his chest. "Earlier. In the carpark. And in the pub, too.”

Lyra shifted, fingertips tracing the smooth plane of his abdomen. "Oh, I don't really know," she confessed softly, feeling the baby roll under her skin, as if trying to join in the conversation. "It's just what I've been picturing, you see. A boy who...well, who looks like you. Like you did when we met," she whispered, remembering. "Your face was always so serious." She smiled, nose burrowing into his shoulder. "I've been picturing that face on a baby. It's quite a laugh, actually."

Will chuckled with her, stretching down to place a kiss on the crown of her hair.

"It could be a girl," he pointed out, raising a hand along Lyra's body to rest on her belly, leaving goosebumps in his wake. "A girl with your hair, your smile, your silver tongue-“ he smirked. "Your habit of cheating at cards-"

"Hey!" Lyra interjected, swatting at him. "You never proved that, so don't act so high-and-mighty, Mister 'I sulk when I don't win every game-'"

Her tirade was drowned out as Will laughed fondly and stretched his arms over his head. He was so tall that it was usual for him to flatten his palms against the headboard and angle himself under the covers. But Lyra felt fussed when he strained against the bedframe until it creaked, and Kirjava followed suit, arching her spine and stretching her paws. Lyra nestled her cheek against Will’s chest, attempting to calm him, and feeling an ache in her lower back that she was keen to dispel.

“What?” she huffed rather grumpily, as he shifted again.

He rolled over to face her. “Would you want to find out?” he asked. “About the baby, I mean.” His brow furrowed while he talked. “We can, you know, in this world. We can take pictures of them while they’re still inside you, and see how they’re developing, and test for abnormalities, and tell the sex,” he said in a rush. “We could go together, I’ll make an appointment while you’re here-“

Lyra grabbed his wrist and brought his hand to her belly, pressing his palm firmly over where their child was currently nudging repeatedly under the taunt skin. “Don’t they seem alright to you?” she asked. She was incredulous that Will could doubt it. She had never been more sure of anything. “I’ve already asked my aletheiometer if they’re healthy, if they’re growing properly and if they’ll be strong, and they will. I usually never get such clear answers, actually,” she confided, while Will chased the rippling movement with his fingertips, a look of extreme concentration on his face. Lyra was determined to dispel his anxiety. This baby was the product of their love - of course it would be strong. She snuggled close, keeping his palm against her skin. “I haven’t been worried since I asked it. And I told you I’m eating well, and I’ve even been taking some supplements-“

“Still, I’d like to make an appointment for you - for us,” he amended, when Lyra rolled her eyes.

“I en’t got any proper papers or anything here, they won’t see me,” she argued.

“I’ll sort it out. I’ll talk to Priyanka, she’s in obstetrics, she’ll help,” he insisted, and Lyra pursed her lips.

“Let me guess, another thing Doctor Parry knows best-“

He brought his hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Yes, actually, in this case-“

“Could you show us?” Kirjava piped up from across the room, where she and Pan were perched on top of Will’s desk.

“What - the aletheiometer?”

With a graceful leap, Kirjava bounded onto the floor, and then sprung onto the foot of the bed, leaving Pantalaimon to scamper after her, scattering papers in his haste.

Lyra struggled to sit up to face her. “You want to watch me - just ask it all the same questions? About all this?”

The cat’s eyes were luminous in the dark of the bedroom as she nodded eagerly. Lyra turned to ask Will, but she saw he was sitting up now as well, and was radiating a powerful sense of controlled curiosity that made Lyra realize how much he needed some kind of confirmation that this was all real. She swung her legs out from the covers, intent on hunting for the soft canvas sack among her discarded clothes, but Pantalaimon beat her to it and came scurrying back clutching its drawstring in his mouth. She petted his head fondly and drew out the aletheiometer.

“I’ll frame the question, and then read the answer,” she narrated her actions to her intent audience. With habitual ease, she positioned the outer hands confidently and framed her first question:  _will our baby be healthy?_

_Apple, scale._ The answer was accompanied by a shiver of fond impatience from the instrument, as if reminding Lyra that she had, in fact, asked this same question a dozen times before.  _I know_ , she thought rather petulantly.  _But you can’t blame me, can you?_

Swiftly, she relayed these findings to Will, whose strong features melted in obvious relief. “Healthy,” he sighed, fingers shooting out to hover in the air over her aletheiometer. “Thank god.”

Lyra huffed. “Thank  _me_ , more like,” she sniffed. “Thank  _us_ . This baby will be alright because we will always be there to make sure he won’t ever be anything else.”

Lyra sensed Will’s breathing hitch as he swallowed deeply. “Lyra," he whispered, “what are we going to do?" It was as if the question sucked all the air out of the bedroom. Lyra felt suddenly suffocated.

“How can we- I mean, they’ll be born so soon, and there’s so much we still don’t know,” he said shakily. “We haven’t ever figured out a way to stay in one world for too long, buthow can we know if it’s even safe for an infant to cross between worlds? If it isn’t, and they’re born in your world, then how can I-?” he stuttered around the impossible problem. “I’ll have to be there, I’ll have to find a way,” he vowed. “But, how can we know what world they even belong to?“ Will pulled away from her gently to look down at her, his dark face muddled with emotion.

“How do you mean?” she asked, as Kirjava crept on her soft paws across the duvet.

“I mean, which world does the baby belong to, do you think? How can we know?” he repeated.

In truth, it was something that Lyra had been turning over in her mind for the last four months, since the moment she’d realized her own condition. There could be no doubt that the baby had been conceived in her own world. And Lyra was its mother, so - she experienced a jolt of panicked uncertainty. “I think he’ll probably have to be born in my world,” she admitted in a small voice.

“But Lyra - even besides the worst of it - if we’re still coming back and forth, then you’re right, we need papers. How are we to get proper birth certificates? Proper healthcare, real records, so we all have legal connections, so we’re protected from social services?” he asked intensely, his voice focused and precise.

Lyra listened and stared at the ceiling. She could sense Pantalaimon at the foot of the bed, with Kirjava tensed next to him.

"Kir," she asked, still gazing at the bumps in Will's bedroom ceiling, "what do you think we should do?"

Will stiffened next to her, shifting closer so his face loomed beside hers in the half-light. "That's not fair-" he protested.

"Why ever not? Why shouldn't I ask her?"

"Because it's not all about that, alright, it’s not about me!” he argued defensively. “This isn’t about what I want,” he sighed and shook his head, and Lyra felt a viscous surge of annoyance at being spoken to so dismissively.

“I don’t see why we can’t at least talk about what we’d really want,” she pleaded, taking great pains to control her irritation. “It isn’t as if - I mean, we’re meant to be happy, we’re meant to be buying nappies, or decorating a nursery, or whatever else it is that parents usually do!” she said hotly, feeling out of her depth but wanting to prove her point. She’d never had doting parents, never had siblings or been around young babies, but without those experiences she was now utterly determined to give her own family everything they deserved. “So just tell me that you want the baby born here, tell me you want a home together, where Mary can visit - tell me you want your Mum to meet her grandchild!” she demanded.

But Will grimaced and sat up, staring off into the darkness of his bedroom. “But it won’t just be that simple for us, Lyra, there are so many more things we have to consider-"

Lyra scowled and pulled the sheets up to her chin. "I know there is, Will, I en't  stupid , you know-"

"I wasn't saying you are!”

"Well don't you think I haven’t been worrying for the past few months? I’ve been thinking it all over every damn second of every day!” she felt hot tears spring from her eyes suddenly, flowing down her face. “And I’ve been alone, alright, and I’ve had to make decisions without you, so don’t think I’m not capable because I’ve been doing this for half a bloody year-!“ she took a gulping breath and tried to calm her stubborn nerves.

Will had both his hands raised in front of him, as if in surrender, and he opened his mouth again to speak, but Lyra cut him off.

“Oh, it’s no good!” she cried, and broke into sobs that shook her shoulders. Will looked strangely frightened as Lyra wept, regarding her with a wariness that was entirely new to their relationship, and Lyra felt frustrated all over again.

“I want you, I just want you, I need you,” she cried pathetically, burying her nose in the crook of his neck. “I’ve missed you, I need you, Will, I don’t want to do any of this without you!” she howled miserably.

Will swept her up into his strong arms until she was practically in his lap, and let her tire herself out with sobs until she was hiccoughing against him. He stroked her hair and held her tight against his hard chest, and Lyra was soothed by his warmth and his steadiness. The sheer weight and bulk of him, the solidity and  realness of his body was a comfort in her swirling confusion. She could sense the thrum of his pulse in his throat, and felt the firm press of his lips on her head each time he paused his murmured words of comfort. Lyra allowed herself to be held, and petted, and rocked, like she was a child. She allowed Will to take some of the weary weight of responsibility which she had been bearing alone for half a year, and she felt her heart, beating just above her growing child, ache with the depth of her love. Had there ever been a blessing in her life better than Will Parry?

Lyra remembered growing into a woman without him, feeling her ribs stretch for him, yearning for his breath to fill her hollow lungs, for the hard line of his jaw against her own. Now they were together again, and sometimes it was so sweet that Lyra was overwhelmed by the headiness of embracing him once more. But now they were facing something beyond themselves, something more than their own two souls in love. This was something that Lyra didn’t know how they could bear - however brief the separation, it was already a torment to walk away from him. How could she do it with their child in her arms? Or even still, how could she leave without them? 

She thought, as she so often had since the beginning of her pregnancy, of her mother, and of her father. The circumstances surrounding Lyra’s own conception and birth had been chaotic - her parents were ambitious, powerful, and dangerous individuals, neither capable of caring for their infant daughter. Lyra had developed a greater understanding of both of them as she’d grown older, but this was still something she couldn’t fathom. The idea of being separated from this child - this new being she had created with the man she loved - was unthinkable to her. Yet Marisa and Asriel had done it. They’d fallen so passionately and recklessly in love, they had made Lyra, and then they’d walked away from her. Lyra didn’t know how that could ever be possible for her.

Her tears had subsided, and Will was threading the fingers of his good hand through her tangled hair, still murmuring apologies. She sniffed and sighed, settling in his lap.

“We’ll have to work it all out,” she vowed, nodding against his warm chest. “We’ve got no other choice, so we’ll just have to find a way for us to have this. To have this happiness,” she said, and she swore in her heart that they would.

“Okay,” Will whispered, so it was almost lost against her temple. “Happiness,” he agreed.


	6. this higher thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Will looked out across the garden and raised a hand almost absentmindedly, drawing a circle with his fingertip around the zig-zagging path of the dragonflies, imagining a window to another world opening in the air. He remembered - the way he often did, frustrated and itching and calm all at once - the press of a blade, the grip of cool metal in his hand.“

The next morning, they scrounged for breakfast and enjoyed it together tucked up in bed. This was a luxury that still baffled Will as much as the opposite baffled Lyra, who was used to a certain level of quotidian comforts. Will had booked off this week from the clinic to be with Lyra, for which he was now more grateful than ever. 

They decided almost without discussing it to go walking about his neighbourhood, and Lyra smiled up at him when she took his hand and led him towards where she knew the botanic gardens were. 

It was a grey and rainy morning, but Will appreciated, as always, the beauty of this spot. To be there now with Lyra and their baby was a heady thing - this perennially bittersweet place was now filled with joy, so much that he felt a little giddy as they found the bench that had sustained them for so many lonely midsummer afternoons. 

As the rain drizzled into nothing and clouds scuttled past, they stayed cuddled close together under his large black brolly. Eventually, several dragonflies began to zip past them, darting around their heads, flashing jewel-bright in the weak morning sun. 

They continued the conversation that had kept them up the night before. Lyra was determined to understand Will’s worry over the particulars of their life together.

“Will, you know it was the aleithemeter that first told me where to find the doorway between our worlds—“

“I know—“

“—and it told me that it’s one of the sort that have been around forever and don’t leak Dust, and I’ve never known whether it was an accident, since the angels were determined to close every single one,” she emphasized each word carefully, “—but it’s there, and we keep using it, and the only answer the aletheiometer has ever given me is so damned confusing that I can’t make sense of it,” she continued in a rush. 

Will considered her words carefully. “Well,” he said, feeling a dull twinge of phantom pain in his missing fingers, “you and I, we’re linked, aren’t we? And because we met, or—“ he frowned, working it out. “ Or, maybe I should say the purpose of us meeting was to bring about all the change to the universes that we did.”

Lyra nodded. “Yes, we were the reason for - and other people too, of course, but especially us - what with the prophecy, and everything, we’ve always been caught up in...” she pursed her lips. “Well, destiny, I suppose.“

Will had spent most of his young adulthood wrestling with this concept, that he had been fated to meet Lyra and bring about the freedom of dead souls and the end of the tyranny in heaven. It was heady stuff, especially when he was reeling from loss and struggling to fit back into life in his own world. But he thought that he could accept it a little better, when he gazed at Lyra now. 

“I think this is still part of that,” he said slowly, his voice low and measured. 

“What do you mean?”

Will found then that he felt very clear-headed. “I think that what’s happening now is still connected. To our,” he swallowed and searched for the right term. “Our roles, within the universes. As forces of change, and good,” he said. 

Lyra scrunched up her face rather adorably. “Will,” she said, “I’ve a degree in economic history, not philosophy, there’s only so much I can bear with you, here.”

He sighed. “Lyra, don’t pretend you don’t think about all of this, too.”

She fluttered her lips and took the brolly from him, snapping it closed and placing it down decisively. “Yes alright,” she admitted. “Go on.”

Will withdrew his arm from around her shoulders so he could turn and look her in the face. “I can’t stop thinking about that moment when I saw Moxie - that cat, you know - all those years ago, and I’ve been reading up on mythology, and symbols—“

“What?” 

“You told me the aletheiometer worked like that a bit, with hieroglyphics, or, symbols with sort of archetypal—“

“—meanings, yes, runes and the like—“

“Exactly, so I wanted to be able to understand your work with it better—“

Lyra’s brow lost her worry for a moment and she preened with pride. “Oh, you’re just brilliant,” she said fondly, shaking her head. 

Will pressed on. “Anyway, so I’ve been reading. And you know, the entrance to the Greek Underworld, in stories it’s often signaled by an animal. Or, well, there’s some other things, like Hades and Persephone, Isis and Osiris—“

“Excuse me?” Lyra spluttered, looking lost. “I en’t heard of any - are you having some sort of stroke?” she accused, utterly confused. 

Will rolled his eyes - semantics always tripped them up. “I just mean, there are these myths about the land of the Dead, and they always feature figures pretty similar to us, and they’re always more about rebirth than anything. And the spring equinox being related to emergence from another world, and everything in the Book of the Dead - do you have mummies? Sort of like your shrunken heads, I guess—“

“Will,” Lyra interrupted softly, reaching a hand up to card her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Please slow down. What are you saying about us?”

He felt soothed by her gentle touch. The scratch of her nails on his skin was comforting and grounding, sending a shiver rippling down his spine. Kirjava arched her back and dug her nails into the wet grass behind them. Will refocused and tried very hard to make sense, even as he was working out his own point. “I just can’t help but feel like everything, always, has been about bringing me to you. That we were lead, and we chose, and we did what we were always meant to do,” he said in a rush, as Kirjava twisted around his ankles. “And this is part of it. It’s a renewal. Birth. Hope,” he offered. 

Lyra was quiet and still, and Will worried he’d lost her among the mythology. He felt the warmth of her beside him and smelled the faintly flowery scent of her hair. He reached out to her, tentatively placing a hand on the hard rise of her belly. She brought her hand quickly on top of his. Will delighted again at the tiny sense of movement under his palm, as they gazed together at her body swollen with his child. 

“Don’t you think that could be true?” he said in a hush. “That this is still part of all that?”

She had gone very still. “What? That we were meant to find each other again? That we were meant to—?” she squirmed, and Pantalaimon flowed around her shoulders. “Meant to have a child?”

He couldn’t help but sense the truth of what he’d stumbled upon. “Lyra Silvertongue,” he said softly. “You’ve been called Eve before.”

“Oh, don’t, please,” she growled, but Will persisted. 

“We’ve got to face it - why else were we able to find the doorway? After so long?”

“But I’ve just thought that this was - I don’t know, an oversight, or - it’s just an accident, it’s a natural doorway!” she spluttered. “And we checked, I checked endlessly at the start, and it’s not letting in Dust from what we can tell, and - and we’ve been so happy!”

“Yes,” he nodded fervently, but she had tears glinting in her eyes. 

“I thought we were done with that all, I didn’t think we were still being - watched, or guided, and now—“ she broke off with a look of dawning realization. “Now, you think this could be happening by design?” she asked in a loud voice, almost accusatory. “I don’t want that for our baby,” she declared fiercely, her face flushed with fervent conviction. “They’re ours, not the universes’. This is happening because we love each other!” she burst out. She stood from the bench suddenly, radiating anxiety, resplendent in her fury.

With her dæmon wrapped around her shoulders, and both arms cradling her round belly protectively, she looked, Will thought, like a Victorian image of Madonna. A Raphaelite holy mother Mary. Will stood slowly, joining her on the cobbled pathway of the empty garden. 

Her eyes became bright. “I love this baby already,” she whispered, and Will’s chest heaved. “So much I can’t believe it sometimes. So much it scares me. I’m so scared of what—“ she choked off, and Will squeezed her soft hand in his calloused one. She took a steadying breath. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do,” she explained vaguely. “Nothing I wouldn’t be capable of.”

Will understood. He had only known about this child for a single day, but he knew in the very marrow of his bones that he would stop at nothing to protect it, to shelter it and love it, love it because it was his and Lyra’s and nothing had ever been more right. His purpose had become entirely focused on the life growing under Lyra’s skin. 

“I know it doesn’t seem fair—“

Lyra bristled. “Fair?” she repeated incredulously. “Nothing has ever been very fair for us, Will, but this is beyond that, if what you think it true, then it’s monstrous, it’s awful!” she spat. “What could they want with our child?”

Will clenched his teeth. “A child of two worlds,” he reasoned bitterly. “That seems pretty unique, to me. Powerful.” He shook his head and rubbed at his jaw. 

“I don’t want us to be caught up in all that again,” she protested. 

But then Pantalaimon piped up from around her shoulders, his small face ruffling her hair as he spoke. 

“There’s so much our world could learn from yours, and the other way round, too,” he said. “So far, nothing we promised to do has been impossible - we’ve been learning things, and building things, and affecting things, separately, right? And we’ve still been so active.“

“But now, with our baby coming, both our worlds are entwined completely,” Kirjava murmured in agreement. “Now we must find a way to help build that connection. To share our knowledge.”

Lyra scoffed. “But if this was what was meant to happen, why couldn’t we just have stayed connected, back when we were kids? We had to close every cut but one! They wouldn’t let us be together! Why?” 

“We know that, Lyra,” Pan whispered in her ear. “We wouldn’t have lived and grown and thrived. We would have been sick. We could never have - it couldn’t have happened like this.”

She groaned and sat down on the bench again in a rush, hands still cradling the swell of her abdomen protectively. “And we couldn't have opened any new windows, because of the Dust and Spectres. What were we supposed to do, let Dust fall out of worlds? Never!“ she exhaled harshly. “And we couldn’t have known we might one day find a way to each other again, because—“ she ground her teeth together. “I'd've looked. I'd've hunted all over the world and not done any good with my life, I know that," she admitted. 

Will agreed. “And that’s it, they knew that, too, Lyra, that when we found each other again, nothing could’ve stopped us from being together, from loving each other. It was inevitable. Even now, when I’m with you, I can barely—“ he stopped, shaking his head as he braced himself on the back of the bench. Just the sight of Lyra sitting in front of him with dampened hair and pink-tinged cheeks was enough to send his blood pounding. “God, sometimes I can hardly think straight.”

She nodded up at him, her wild blonde hair bouncing at her shoulders. “Me too,” she breathed, sending a wave of heat cresting through Will’s body, to his core. “You know that. I used to dream of you, when we were first apart,” she confessed, flushing slightly. “I want you all the time,” she said significantly, making Will’s heart sing. “That’s never, never changed,” she told him. 

He bent jerkily to press a quick kiss to the top of her head. “I think the angels know that,” Will said huskily, clenching the wooden slats of the bench. 

They gazed at each other and Will knew they were thinking the very same thought. It was a frightening one, but they couldn’t skirt around it. This realization had to be met head-on. 

It was Lyra who managed it. “The natural window,” she said with a shaky exhale. “It was left open so that this would happen, so that we could find each other again, and have a child of two worlds. Someone born to help unite us all,” she said. “To create the republic of heaven.” 

Will was so proud of her bravery that he thought his chest might burst. Kirjava mewled at their feet, brushing her head against Lyra’s ankles. “Yes,” he agreed, squaring his shoulders. “I think so.”

The woman he loved tilted her chin up determinedly and cleared her throat. “Alright then,” she said briskly, fixing her gaze ahead of her. “We did it. Our child is coming soon. So what do we do next?”

Will looked out across the garden and raised a hand almost absentmindedly, drawing a circle with his finger tip around the zig-zagging path of two dragonflies, imagining a window to another world opening in the air. He remembered - the way he often did, frustrated and itching and calm all at once - the press of a blade, the grip of cool metal in his hand. 

Lyra followed his movements and looked back at him, questions in her eyes. Will had a sliver of an idea, as delicate as soap bubble - testing rather than tearing, exploration that was focused and gentle. 

“I think,” he said slowly, surely, “it’s time to find the splinters of the Knife.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of this part - stay tuned for the next!
> 
> In the meantime, check out [my other HDM fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10412679), not in this series. 
> 
> “All the ordinary circumstances of life ceased to exist. That grief and this joy were like holes in this ordinary life, through which something higher showed. And just as painful, as tormenting in its coming, was what was now being accomplished; and in contemplating this higher thing, the soul rose to such heights as it had never known before. In her face, there was the same change from earthly to unearthly that occurs in the faces of the dead; but there it is a farewell, here it was a meeting."  
> —Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy.


End file.
